Medvedev Raps Soviet-Era Repression

President Dmitry Medvedev said Friday that there could be no justification for the Soviet government’s crimes against its own people and called for museums and memorial centers to be built to commemorate the victims.

Medvedev, speaking in a blog-posted video marking a day set aside in 1991 to commemorate victims of Soviet political repression, lamented millions of deaths and “maimed destinies” in some of the strongest criticism of the Communist era to come from the Kremlin since Vladimir Putin came to power a decade ago.

He also suggested that young Russians are getting a lopsided picture of their country’s past — learning plenty about its proud moments but little about the bloodbath that reached its peak under Josef Stalin in the Great Terror of the late 1930s.

“Let’s just think about: Millions of people died as a result of terror and false accusations — millions,” a somber-faced Medvedev said. “They were deprived of all rights, even the right to a decent human burial, and for long years their names were simply crossed out of history.

“And yet today, it is still possible to hear that these many victims were justified by some higher state goal,” he said.

The president proposed that museums and memorial centers be constructed and urged new efforts to search for mass graves and identify the dead.

A main goal of the remarks may have been to set Medvedev apart from Putin, whose presidency ushered in a period of burgeoning national pride, reflected in everything from patriotic movies about the past to a strident push for universal recognition of the Kremlin’s bluntly positive portrayal of the Soviet role in World War II.

Medvedev suggested that such a sunny portrait is misleading and even dangerous. He cited what he said was an opinion poll two years ago — when Putin was still president — that showed that 90 percent of young adults in Russia could not name any well-known victims of Soviet oppression.

“I am convinced that the memory of national tragedies is just as sacred as the memory of victories,” Medvedev said in the address, parts of which were featured prominently on state-run television news programs.

He said it is “extremely important” for young people to be able to “emotionally empathize with one of the greatest tragedies of Russian history.”

Stalin is revered by many who say he led the Soviet Union to victory in World War II and turned a struggling nation into a superpower. Medvedev acknowledged the achievements of Stalin’s era, but credited them to “the people” and said they were no excuse for the crimes of his regime.

According to the human rights group Memorial, Stalin ordered the deaths of at least 724,000 citizens during the purges that peaked in the late 1930s. Scholars estimate that tens of millions of people were imprisoned in the gulag and that millions died as a result of the forced labor system.

“I am convinced that no development of the country, no successes, no ambitions can be achieved at the cost of human suffering and loss,” Medvedev said. “Nobody can place himself higher the value of human life. And there is no justification for repressions.”

Medvedev said Oct. 30 is a day to remember “millions of maimed destinies: people shot without trial or investigation, people sent to the camps and into exile, deprived of civil rights.”

(AP, MT)